Agnete Kirkeby

Developmental Neuroscience

In our research, we're interested in understanding the detailed processes which control human brain development. In particular, we want to understand how the development of the human brain is unique compared to brain development in flies or mice which are most often used to study brain development. The human brain is a highly complex structure, and it consists of hundreds of different subtypes of neural cells, all of which fulfil a highly specific function in the brain network. If we can understand how every single one of these hundreds of subtypes of cells are formed during embryo development, then we can use this knowledge to produce human neurons from human stem cells in the lab. This gives us an absolutely unique opportunity to study these human nerve cells in the lab – as they can be used for drug screening or for transplantation as a regenerative therapy to brain diseases. The opportunity of making and studying human nerve cells in the lab is unique, because we otherwise never have access to living human brain tissue, so we cannot study in detail how human nerve cells function if we do not produce them ourselves in the lab.